


Subterranea

by disgruntled_owl



Series: Subterranea [1]
Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Ancient Rome, Roman Myths, Underground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 04:11:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12473192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgruntled_owl/pseuds/disgruntled_owl
Summary: "Whatever Rome and our Holy Mother Church could not subdue, they smothered," Micheletto said. "But some things cannot be extinguished so easily.”





	Subterranea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arithanas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/gifts).



“There is something, Your Eminence, that I should show you.”

Micheletto gestured to an unremarkable wooden door at the end of the arcade. The ochre light streaming across it heralded the coming sunset. The servants had left this palazzo hours ago, and now only Cesare’s footsteps sounded against the floors.

A brown smudge marked the tile in front of the door. Scrubbed and sun-bleached, the stain had become subtle enough to escape the notice of anyone but Cesare. He had reclaimed this palazzo and its worldly goods for the Church from a traitorous bishop, an informant to the exile Della Rovere. Poison, poured by Micheletto, had dispatched the bishop three nights ago, but Cesare’s mercenary rarely claimed only one victim. Cesare wondered about this spatter of blood; had it come from one of the guards? A servant? Micheletto himself? Fantasies flooded his mind: of Micheletto flitting from shadow to shadow, of the flash of his dagger, of the breath catching in the throats of his prey. Fantasies unfit for a man of the cloth.

The creak of the old door handle jolted Cesare from his reverie. Behind the door lay a storeroom, seemingly long-forgotten, but recently disturbed. Boxes and barrels had been scattered about or turned on their sides. Grime and debris had been swept to the walls, exposing naked patches of plaster.  

“You’ve brought me here to show me sour wine and old turnips?” Cesare asked, with a derisive snort. “We should call the porters back; clearly they haven’t gathered all the valuables.”

“No, your Eminence.” Micheletto rolled a barrel away and pulled up a door set into the floor, which opened with a squeal. Clouds of dust swelled in the room. Micheletto dipped a freshly-lit torch into the black mouth of the doorway, revealing a set of stairs descending into darkness. “If this palazzo now belongs to you, you should know its secrets.”

“A cellar?”

“A passageway.”

Cesare lit another torch and ventured down into the chamber. The damp chill seeped through his vestments, making him shiver. At the foot of the steps, a tunnel vault loomed, extending far further than the light could reach. “How did you know this was here?” Cesare asked, a note of wonder in his voice.

“Men in my profession use these passages, your Eminence,” Micheletto replied as he strode into the tunnel. “I have found them below other houses in this quarter. There are often signs on the surface.” He turned on his heel and faced Cesare, with only his face lit by the torch. “I imagine a man such as yourself could make use of a tunnel like this.”

Cesare grinned and followed. “Only if I know where it leads, Micheletto.”

The bishop's servants had stacked crates around the tunnel entrance, but there was no refuse, or even sconces for torches, in the vault beyond. They had been willing to venture to the tunnel’s mouth, but no further.

Cesare listened as his footfalls and the rattle of his cross tore through a silence thick as velvet. Micheletto moved soundlessly beside him. “These passages,” Cesare murmured. “Do you think our deadly departed bishop built them, like Cardinal Orsini did in his palazzo? Perhaps his spies moved through here, as your compatriots have.”

“Used these tunnels, perhaps,” Micheletto said. “But built them, no. These have existed long before the bishop, or the Church for that matter. At this moment, we walk through ancient Rome.”

Faint screeches and scratches rose from a channel near the top of the vault. Cesare raised his torch and caught a flash of red eyes before they disappeared. The flame’s halo uncovered a string of Latin letters, scrawled by an unsteady hand. Above them, someone had drawn a series of concentric circles to ward off the Evil Eye.

They followed the corridor until it emptied into a gigantic circular room. Black maws gaped in all directions: more tunnels, leading to still more unknowns. In the center of the room stood a silent fountain, its basin crusted over with lichens and salt. Their firelight illuminated mosaics of bare-breasted nymphs, the pigment on the tiles still brilliant after years of shelter from the sun.  
  
“Incredible,” Cesare declared. “There are more places like this?”

“Crypts, temples, apartments, bordellos: anything you might imagine, buried over the centuries. Whatever Rome and our Holy Mother Church could not subdue, they smothered. But, as you can see, some things cannot be extinguished so easily.”  
  
The thrill of it made Cesare's skin tingle and his heart race. A world underground, like veins beneath skin, pulsing with secrets deemed too dreadful to let surface. He smacked his lips, so delicious was this fresh chance of adventure.

“There’s still the matter of where all these passages lead.” Cesare approached the empty fountain and brushed his fingers across the ragged surface of the basin. Crystals and crust flaked apart between his fingers. “They won’t do us much good if we can’t find a way up. We should split up to cover more ground.”

Micheletto’s face was hidden in shadow, but Cesare could sense him arching an eyebrow. “As you wish, your Eminence.” A warning lurked in his words, but he said no more. He sank into the blackness, a corona of red shrinking around his head and shoulders.

Cesare squinted at the dimly lit stone and spotted the shape of a bull above the keystone of an archway. The appearance of the Borgia sigil emboldened him to enter the tunnel beneath it. This corridor was high and wide and swelled with echoes with each step and breath he took. He took a guilty pleasure in prowling through his condottiero’s territory. He felt more alive here than he ever had, or would, in the halls of St. Peter’s Cathedral. Before long, he would have to reemerge into the sunlight and ape at being a cardinal once more, but for now-

A milk-white face flashed in the gloom ahead of him. Cesare sucked in his breath as a cold sweat sprang to his skin. Though Micheletto had said mercenaries skulked through these tunnels, only now did Cesare realize that he might not be alone.

He flattened himself against the wall of the tunnel and listened for the rustle of a cloak or the scrape of shoe leather against the floor. The stave of his torch grew hot in his hand. For an instant, he contemplated snuffing it out and springing on this interloper under the cover of darkness. But certainly he had already been seen, and the torch was both his only weapon and his only way back.

Cesare waited, hearing nothing but the thunder of his heartbeat. He willed his fear into aggression and marched into the room, teeth gritted. The face hovered at the edge of the torchlight, watching him with empty eyes and expressionless lips. Cesare spotted a pair of candelabra a few steps ahead, and, without breaking his stare, lit the wicks one by one. Candlelight swept over the figure, revealing limbs, a breastplate, and a helmet, all made of alabaster. It spread to the figure's white, motionless attendants: grimacing women and soldiers with upthrust swords.

 “A statuary,” Cesare growled to himself. His cheeks burned. “A pagan temple.”

He blew out the torch and tossed it to the ground. How like a child, a fool, he thought to himself, to cower before an idol in the dark. At least Micheletto had not been there to witness it. He unlaced his collar and massaged his bare throat. For a moment, terror had overwhelmed him, but in it there had been a sweet trace of possibility—of hunting prey in the unlit depths of subterranean Rome.

His panic had left his skin hot and his underarms damp. Now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the light from the candelabras, he could see new objects in the room. Paintings of great golden bulls covered the walls, their wild eyes gazing at him through patches of rot and fungi. At the base of the statue—of Mars, Cesare suspected—stood a broad stone altar, with a large golden bowl at its feet. Crimson streaks striped its exterior, but it held cool, clear water, which must have dripped from the ceiling over the course of centuries. He knelt down beside the bowl, cupped the water in his hands, and splashed it across his face.

At that moment, the room began to swim. The silence was subsumed by whispering voices. Cesare gazed up at Mars, whose glowering face seemed to liquefy in the smoke-tinged air. He staggered to his feet and knocked the bowl over; a dreadful clanging sound reverberated throughout the chamber. The bodies of Mars’ supplicants loomed, their faces contorting, their lips parting as screams and roars echoed around him. He reached out to steady himself and closed his hand around the stone wrist of the statue of a soldier. It tumbled and struck the floor with an ear-splitting crack.

“What heathen magic is this?” Cesare snarled as he snatched up remains of the soldier’s sword. He dropped into a fighting stance and felt a wave of pleasure, like the tolling of a bell within his body. It was an unspeakable pang: a craving for bloodshed.

He peered out at the phantoms that circled him. Mars, his women, and his warriors had disappeared. New faces and bodies congealed out of the mist. Cardinal Orsini, dribbling foam and bile, lurched toward him. Cesare stabbed, and the Cardinal dissolved around the tip of his alabaster blade. Baron Bonadeo, a smirk still smeared across his bloated face, rose up, and Cesare relived the passion of plunging his blade into his ephemeral throat. Virulence metamorphosed into lust. “Are there more?” he bellowed, licking the sweat from his lips.

 Phantoms with scarred faces—men he could not name—swarmed him, and he sliced through them all. “Your Eminence!” they wailed as they dissipated. “Your Eminence!”

 “Come now!” he shouted, grinning maniacally. “Who else dares?”

Diaphanous figures emerged from the shadows. Della Rovere, with sunken cheeks and piercing eyes. Giovanni Sforza, sneering even as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Juan, his forehead streaked with sweat, his lips trembling as they parted to cry his brother’s name.

 “Cesare!”

A heavy hand clapped Cesare's shoulder, and he whirled around. The scarred, solemn face of Micheletto bloomed in full color before him. A shudder ran through his whole body, and he dropped to his knees. The sword fell from his hand and shattered on the stone floor.

 Micheletto knelt down and held Cesare in his arms, brushing damp locks of hair away from his face. The echoes drained away, and soon all Cesare heard was the sound of his own breath. He crawled back and peered over Micheletto’s shoulder. Mars towered above the altar; his stone servants guarded the space below. In the half-lit distance, he could see the overturned bowl and fragments of white limbs.

"What was I doing?” he whispered. “What did you see?”

“I can’t say I know, your Eminence,” Micheletto replied. His voice was calm, but an intensity brimmed in his eyes. “You were alone. When I found you, it looked like you were under a spell. A better question might be: what did _you_ see?”

Cesare looked up at Mars, who returned a cold, forbidding stare. “I saw...visions,” he said. “I saw the faces of men that had perished by our hands,” he said. “And I saw the faces of men that might...do the same.” More truths gathered in his throat and on his tongue: that he might find these deaths, and others, as sweet as they were dreadful, that he might find no greater satisfaction than feeling his enemies’ last breaths escape their bodies. He swallowed hard and fumbled for the cross around his neck. For now, such a truth might best be left underground.

 He clambered to his feet. “Did you find a way out?,” he asked, extending a hand to Micheletto.

His _condottiero_ gripped it tight and rose to his side. “Not yet, your Eminence. Only more chambers like this one.”

Cesare held his torch against a candle until its tip was engulfed in flames. “Then we go back the way we came, and leave them to the dark.” For now, he thought, but perhaps not for long.


End file.
